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Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots

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Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots

#21

Post by reaperducer »

hsnv wrote: post #6

I've always found the idea of letting strangers clean my home strange. Maybe I grew up in the wrong tax bracket. I see cleaning your own home, as well as other chores (dishes, laundry) as an act of self-hygiene. If you want a robot to do your chores, that gives me the same feeling as desiring a robot to bathe you, wipe your bottom and genitals after the toilet, brush your teeth for you etc. Of course these are not ap…

Maybe I grew up in the wrong tax bracket.

I knew a middle-aged waitress who had a cleaning woman come in every week or two.

After being on her feet for 10 hours dealing with jerks in a diner six days a week, she was too tired to do more than basic cleaning. The price was well worth it to her.

Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots

#22

Post by ShowalkKama »

hsnv wrote: post #6

I've always found the idea of letting strangers clean my home strange. Maybe I grew up in the wrong tax bracket. I see cleaning your own home, as well as other chores (dishes, laundry) as an act of self-hygiene. If you want a robot to do your chores, that gives me the same feeling as desiring a robot to bathe you, wipe your bottom and genitals after the toilet, brush your teeth for you etc. Of course these are not ap…

>If you want a robot to do your chores

you mean like a dishwasher or a washing machine?

Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots

#23

Post by NikolaNovak »

hsnv wrote: post #6

I've always found the idea of letting strangers clean my home strange. Maybe I grew up in the wrong tax bracket. I see cleaning your own home, as well as other chores (dishes, laundry) as an act of self-hygiene. If you want a robot to do your chores, that gives me the same feeling as desiring a robot to bathe you, wipe your bottom and genitals after the toilet, brush your teeth for you etc. Of course these are not ap…

I don't think it's a tax bracket thing, or even necessarily a culture/upbringing thing --> I was brought up white-collar working middle class -ish (Eastern European middle-class, which probably doesn't map cleanly to North American middle class; buying a bottle of coke was a Birthday thing), but then was refugee from a civil war for a while, with the appropriate tax bracket. And my grandma certainly instilled much of the same sense in me :)

Thing is, today, as an adult, I'm painfully aware that I'm mortal and life is limited and time is the most precious resource available to me. I'm not religious so I don't believe in after-life reward for being a good boy either. So I'm a little bit more mindful / little less self-flagellating, than I used to be, about these things.

For myself in particular:

* Yes, I shower and wipe my own bottom :)

* I am the dishes and laundry queen in my family, though I definitely use laundry machine (curious where that would fit in your matrix btw? :)

* I don't mind the act of lawn mowing but I absolutely resent the randomness of it - at some point north american society decided that we/they will 1. Adopt a very specific fast growing grass for ALL the lawns and 2. Having it more than ~5cm long is an affront to man and god and neighbourhood alike. Why they haven't just culturally picked cloverleaf or something is beyond me

* I like organizing my living space but I get zero sense of satisfaction out of vacuuming, dusting, and general maintenance. Many other people love it! In turn though, they probably get zero need to constantly rearchitect their home network like I do :->

In sum - I personally put laundry machine and auto-vacuum in very different category than showers and wiping bottoms, but if you lump them together, much power to you, though I don't think it's a tax bracket thing necessarily :)

Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots

#24

Post by jrmg »

hsnv wrote: post #6

I've always found the idea of letting strangers clean my home strange. Maybe I grew up in the wrong tax bracket. I see cleaning your own home, as well as other chores (dishes, laundry) as an act of self-hygiene. If you want a robot to do your chores, that gives me the same feeling as desiring a robot to bathe you, wipe your bottom and genitals after the toilet, brush your teeth for you etc. Of course these are not ap…

I thought the same until we started getting our house cleaned every two weeks.

It’s so freeing.

It feels well worth even a few hours of my work to pay for the time of the (so efficient) cleaners. So much better value than things most people don’t think twice about paying for (streaming services, faster Internet, a nice car, etc…)

Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots

#25

Post by whalesalad »

janice1999 wrote: post #16

Just a reminder: "Roomba testers feel misled after intimate images ended up on Facebook" https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/10/1066500/roomba-i...

Three obnoxious takeovers to dismiss on that page: full screen takeover, 25% off summer sale. Cookie warning. 25% off first story sign up banner.

The internet sucks.

Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots

#26

Post by sublinear »

hansonkd wrote: post #10
hsnv wrote: post #6

I've always found the idea of letting strangers clean my home strange. Maybe I grew up in the wrong tax bracket. I see cleaning your own home, as well as other chores (dishes, laundry) as an act of self-hygiene. If you want a robot to do your chores, that gives me the same feeling as desiring a robot to bathe you, wipe your bottom and genitals after the toilet, brush your teeth for you etc. Of course these are not ap…

In general once or twice a month cleaners aren't hired to "tidy up", they deep clean. a bit like the difference of brushing your teeth and going to a hygienist.

I think the point still stands for the type of nerd on HN.

Deep cleaning isn't that hard and, for now, it's relatively inexpensive. There are still only a handful of products where price gouging has occurred due to influencer marketing.

All that needs to happen is another "Tide Pods" type of incident for Amazon to ban commercial cleaning supplies or anything with an SDS. Of course we make the robots do dirty work in this future, and boom you've got another form of surveillance threatening the 4th amendment.

"What's the matter bro? Tryin' to clean up a murder scene or what? huh huh huh"

Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots

#27

Post by ljsprague »

catapart wrote: post #12
sonofhans wrote: post #5

”We get training data.” E.g., photos of your children, an inventory of your books, the contents of your medicine cabinet. They may not have plans to sell this stuff, but whoever acquires them certainly will.

I wonder how long it will be before we see politician/celebrity houses with full 3d walkthroughs made from gaussian splats that source from this kind of "every type of interior in the world" mass data set. I wonder if that will prompt some kind of legislative action against this type of service.

There’s a scandal/controversy occurring right now after someone leaked photos of the inside of Ariana Grande’s apartment.

Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots

#28

Post by m463 »

sonofhans wrote: post #5

”We get training data.” E.g., photos of your children, an inventory of your books, the contents of your medicine cabinet. They may not have plans to sell this stuff, but whoever acquires them certainly will.

Slum lords will love this between renters. or airbnb owners.

Even though it is free, they could even take it from the deposit of renters moving out.

Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots

#29

Post by aleyan »

"I always thought that Homejoy were planning to automate as much as possible, if not everything, related to cleaning services using robotics and stuff, and that humans were only a temporary measure while developing technology." -devgutt 2015 [0]

This quote about robots doing home cleaning has been living in my head rent free, and refusing to cleanup after itself, for over a decade. It seemed so crazy to me in 2015 that anyone would seriously consider home cleaning robots to be on a realistic timeline. Yet here we are in 2026 and robots could plausibly clean our homes beyond vacuuming and mopping.

Humans training robots now completely makes sense to me. I think Sunday Robotics use of people wearing "skill capture gloves" [1] that both capture data and limit range of motion to that of the robotic hands is particularly clever. I wish success to both these and other companies in the space, so that someday soon there will be just a little fewer housework around the house, and we move a bit closer to the Jetsons.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9986693 [1] https://youtu.be/QeVnwtCANZ8?si=JoSps5MCxs7zPp0f&t=33

Re: Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots

#30

Post by yoyohello13 »

aleyan wrote: post #29

"I always thought that Homejoy were planning to automate as much as possible, if not everything, related to cleaning services using robotics and stuff, and that humans were only a temporary measure while developing technology." -devgutt 2015 [0] This quote about robots doing home cleaning has been living in my head rent free, and refusing to cleanup after itself, for over a decade. It seemed so crazy to me in 2015 th…

I used to be really excited for stuff like this. Now I realize, home cleaning bots will basically just be cameras in your house reporting back everything it sees to the advertisers/government. Not a very utopian outlook anymore.
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